


Write Your Words on My Skin

by TheWyldeWynd



Series: SWAC - Sealed With A Curse [1]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Maybe - Freeform, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, The Deputy deserves none of this, The Seeds are a mess y'all, Well very little comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-28 01:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15037244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWyldeWynd/pseuds/TheWyldeWynd
Summary: The moment when your soulmark Aligns - when the first words your soulmate will speak to you appear on your skin - is supposed to be one of the happiest of your life.  It's supposed to bring you joy, hope, and all those fairy tale emotions.  It's supposed to be a lot of things.  For some people, though, it's just the first step into a new world of hell.





	1. Joseph

**Author's Note:**

> _*Looks at overflowing desktop in quiet despair* There's so many things I should be working on right now. I am so behind in updating so much stuff. What am I doing right now? *sighs* Welp. I am trash._
> 
>  
> 
> _So a very, very, **very** long time ago one of my friends/occasional beta-readers asked me if I'd write a couple different types of fics. I said "sure" and then proceded to write precicely none of them because I either didn't know the type well enough or just couldn't come up with a plot for it. Time passed, new projects were started, the surface of the Earth cooled, and still I filled none of my friend's requests. Then I played Far Cry 5. Honestly I'm not entirely sure what's going on right now, but I think my plot bunnies might have gotten into some Bliss or something, because suddenly they are running rampant. I am scared, but at least I can finally make good on some of those promises I made back at the begining of time._
> 
>  
> 
> _All this to say: here's a Seed Brothers/Deputy Soulmate AU. I regret much less than I should._

Joseph Seed enters the world with his first soul mark already etched into his skin, a blurred line that will one day sharpen into Words curling around the back of his neck like a guiding hand. The line is the soft, ashy gray of an unresolved bond for nearly seven minutes before one of the nurses – uncertain of what to do with the exhausted, uninterested mother and absent father – asks his big brother if he’d like to hold the baby. Jacob, big for his three years and unusually solemn, nods in response and takes baby Joe into his arms reverently. His face twists at his new brother’s sobs, as though the cries of terror are causing him physical pain, and brushes a kiss against the tiny head.

_**“Don’t be scared,”**_ he breaths against Joe’s skin, _**“I’ll always protect you.”**_

The baby’s sobs die away like magic.

It’s a long, long time before anyone notices that the line on Joe’s neck has turned to a rich, liquid black, and it’s even longer before anyone notices the elegant, ashy gray line that curls and loops around Jacob’s left hand and wrist.

##############

Joseph Seed is twelve years old, waiting with his big brother – his soulmate, his guardian, his Jacob – for the new baby to be born, when he feels something wash across his chest.

Joe gasps, the sound perfectly timed with the low exhale from Jacob, at the sensation – like a cool breeze blowing across him on a blazing hot day, or like cool water flowing over a sunburn. Instinctively, his hand starts to fly to the sensation, only to be caught on route by Jacob’s larger hand. When he looks over in confusion, Jacob’s eyes are almost impossible wide and – shocking the breath from his lungs – full of tears.

They sit there for a long time before they are finally allowed in to see their new brother, a tiny, squirming bundle of pink flesh and blue blankets. They lean down close to Johnny and whisper, and the sudden burst of delight from his newborn mouth is enough to tell them that there’s now a line of inky black around one hand and wrist and another across the back of his neck.

Joseph waits patiently for ten months, two weeks, and three days from that moment. 

Then, one day, Johnny crawls into his lap and sleepily murmurs, _**“My Joe.”**_

That night, when he looks in the mirror, the sharp, clear letters underneath his left collarbone – over his heart – are a beautifully liquid black.

##############

Joseph Seed is twenty-two and trying to hold his life together.

He spends his days and nights working low-paying, menial jobs, surrounded by filth and anger and despair, wading through a world that constantly pulls and tugs at him, trying to drag him beneath the surface and smother him. Every day his body aches from the constant labor, his stomach twists in disgust at the sin that surrounds him, and his heart breaks for the lost and suffering that shamble around him. It’s been eight years since he’s seen his brothers – his soulmates, his Jacob and his John – and with every day that they’re apart, every day that the false-faced government workers smile and refuse to tell him anything, he feels like he’s withering away. There are days… days when the pain and exhaustion threaten to overwhelm him.

But he won’t allow it. Can’t allow it. Because he has his brothers, even if he doesn’t know where they are; because he has a purpose, even if he doesn’t know what it is; and because he has Faith.

He can hear her humming from the bathroom, the sweet strains of _Amazing Grace_ lilting through the cramped, broken down apartment they are slowing turning into a home. He can picture her in his mind, plaiting her hair in the cracked mirror, hand occasionally stealing down to rub her swollen stomach, and his lips lift into a smile despite his exhaustion.

There are days when he has a moment of weakness, when he questions God’s plan, when he wonders how and why it is that Faith has no Words looping around her left hand and wrist, or resting across the back of her neck, or arching over her heart. But before long the moment will pass, and Joseph will remember that it doesn’t matter – that he couldn’t love beautiful, gentle, unmarked Faith any more if she carried his Words – and that it won’t matter to Jacob and John when they find them either.

His smile deepens as sets himself back to preparing their meal, putting together cheap sandwiches on a rickety table clothed with old newspapers – always the real-estate pages, Faith insists on combing through them (“of course, the three of us can fit in here, but we’ll need more room when we find your brothers”) – as his wife hums. 

Then there’s a sudden rush over his right arm, like someone’s spilled ice water over him, and a shocked yelp tears itself from his mouth as he narrowly avoids cutting his palm open with a knife.

He’s utterly bewildered by whatever it was that just happened, gets caught up in scrambling for the things he’s knocked off the table, that he barely notices when Faith call his name, only really coming back to himself when – straightening himself up and putting a bag of wilted lettuce back on the table – he hears Faith cry out again, looking up to see her brown eyes locked on his forearm.

Her eyes are wide with wonder, mouth slack and body trembling, as she half-rushes half-stumbles over to him, hand wavering above his right arm. “Joseph…” she breaths his name like a prayer, eyes flickering between his arm and his eyes like she isn’t sure where to look. “Oh, Joseph!”

There’s a surge of joy in his soul, past memories swelling up and joining together with present sensations, and when Joseph looks down at the blurry gray line fading into existence on his arm he finds himself wondering if it is possible to die from happiness.

A third soulmark. A third soul tied to his.

His hand finds Faith’s, and they’re both crying together, standing in their shamble of a kitchen and hugging each other as the wait for the words to sharpen and form.

It only takes a minute, but for Joseph it might as well be an eternity as the blurry line shifts and grows and twists, shaping and separating itself to form the words that his new soulmate – his precious angel, the new little light that he and his brothers and his Faith can love and protect and cherish for the rest of their days – will one day speak to him. The more the words twist the more he feels the joy and anticipation well up inside him, straining and bubbling to burst free as the letters slowly come into focus until –

The world stutters to a stop around Joseph, his eyes taking in the words and trying to make sense of them. At the same time he hears Faith give a funny little gasp, and something about it draws his attention up from his new soulmark to her face.

He has no idea what she sees in his expression, but it seems to be the last straw, and suddenly his wife is doubled over in their kitchen, laughing hysterically.

Joseph is gaping, at his laughing wife one moment and at the words on the inside of his right forearm the next. In the upended world he suddenly feels his brothers’ words all the more, the steady and comforting weight of Jacob’s _**“Don’t be scared, I’ll always protect you”**_ across the back of his neck, the declaration of pure love and devotion in John’s _**“My Joe”**_ over his heart, and he can’t help but wonder whether he’s simply gone mad and hallucinated the new words, so dramatically contrasting with those he already carries.

Joseph Seed is twenty-two years old, and he can’t begin to comprehend how his soulmate’s first words to him could ever be _**“Eat a dick, Joe.”**_


	2. Jacob

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _OK y'all, heads up. Here's where the rating and tags start coming into play._
> 
>  
> 
> _Warnings ahead for: canon-compliant child abuse, canon-compliant self-loathing, early-onset PTSD, and adult-type language. Also some stuff that, depending how you want to look at it, could either be Joseph/Jacob content or just Joseph & Jacob having a very close sibling relationship. Or, you know, anywhere between the two. It's the Seeds y'all._

Jacob Seed is fourteen years old, sitting next to his little brother – his soulmate, his purpose, his Joseph – in a too small hospital chair, waiting for his new baby brother to be born, and he’s more scared than he’s ever been in his life.

He wishes he wasn’t, wishes he could believe Joe when he says that they’ll love the new baby just as much as they love each other, that baby Johnny will never have to be alone or feel like an afterthought, a mistake made by two monsters who hate their children almost as much as they hate each other. He wishes he could believe Joe when he says that it won’t matter, that there won’t be any difference between what they have with each other and what they’ll have with baby Johnny. He wishes he could believe Joe when he says that other people can be just as important to you as your soulmate, and they’ll prove that to baby Johnny every day. He _wishes_ he could believe it, but he just _can’t._

He’s pretty sure Joe doesn’t believe it either.

Even now they’re pressed as close together as the flimsy hospital chairs will allow, adjacent knees pressed together and Joe’s tired head resting on his shoulder. Even now Jacob’s got his hand resting on the back of Joe’s neck – over his own Words – while Joe’s is holding and stroking and running over the Words on Jacob’s left hand and wrist. Even now they’re sitting in a packed hospital waiting room and might as well be alone on the planet because now – like every other moment of their lives since Joe was born – they both _know_ that no one else _matters_.

And so he’s so, so scared for the tiny, innocent, undeserving baby who is going to enter a world with a father who’d be better off dead, a mother who might as well be already, and two brothers who – no matter how hard they try – are never going to be able to love or care for him as much as they do each other.

They will try. They’ll try so hard. They’ll beat themselves bruised and bloody trying to love baby Johnny enough, and they’ll never be able to. And Jacob’s heart will break from it, he knows that already, but Joe…

Jacob’s so damned scared, because any minute now their new baby brother’s going to be born, and he _knows_ that moment will end up killing both of his brothers, and he’s not going to be strong enough to stop it.

If he had it in him anymore he’d probably cry.

But he doesn’t, so he just sits there and holds his brother/soulmate/reason for living, let’s the smaller boy pet the Words on his hand and wrist, clings to his own Words like he can somehow stop them from turning into a lie, and _waits_.

He expects a nurse to come over to them eventually, to tell them they have a new brother and to come and see, to beam and sing with joy as she tears their lives to shreds.

He does _not_ expect the sudden rush of _feeling_ that sweeps over his chest, under his left collarbone and over his heart, a flood of pain/pleasure/ _relief_ like someone’s pulled a splinter from his flesh, or set a broken bone, or knocked out a festering tooth.

He’s gasping for breath, so lightheaded from the surge that he barely notices Joe jolt upright, barely hears his own gasp, barely manages to react fast enough – to reach out and catch his brother’s wrist – before Joe can yank his shirt off right there in the middle of the waiting room to look at...

At…

Jacob looks at Joe, and Joe looks at Jacob, and if Jacob’s eyes are wetter than they’ve been in _years_ than Joe’s got tears _streaming_ down his face, and he’s pretty sure they’re both grinning like idiots.

It takes everything they have to stay seated, to wait for the nurse – beaming and singing with joy – to come over to them and tell them what they already know.

They make it to their feet, force themselves to walk through the halls, stagger to the basinet, and nearly break to pieces when they see the tiny bundle of perfect, unmarred baby skin and fuzzy blue blankets waiting for them, mewling unhappily and trying to squirm to freedom. 

Their hands are clasped together – Joseph’s fingers still running compulsively over his Words – as they lean over the newborn. Jacob lets Joe speak first, a tender whisper that shocks baby Johnny into a split-second of stillness before he starts squealing in utter delight, big blue eyes wide and locked on his brother. Then, heart in his throat, Jacob leans close whispers himself, and their baby brother – _their_ soulmate, _their_ salvation, _their_ John – nearly works himself into a frenzy, laughing and squealing and squirming, trying to get to them, and Jacob’s pretty damn sure Joseph isn’t the only one crying anymore but he doesn’t _care_.

Eventually they make it back to their house, alone for the time being, until the doctors’ release _their_ Johnny and their mother, until their father crawls out of whatever bar he’s rotting in.

For the first time since either of them can remember, they can’t wait for it to not just be them.

But, for now, it is just them. So Jacob forces himself to let go of Joe’s hand for a few minutes, long enough to stumble through the kitchen and scrape together enough food for them to share – some for him, most for Joe – before falling down onto the decrepit old couch next to his brother and tugging him into his arms, laughing and gasping and snuffling into Joe’s hair like a madman. And Joe, as always, tumbles into his embrace, curls into his lap and wraps his arms around him tightly, buries his face in Jacob’s neck and laughs and sobs along with him. 

Eventually they calm down a little, feeling raw and vulnerable and more happy than they can ever remember being. Jacob finally shoves the chipped plate of food into his brother’s hands, and couldn’t care less that his own are trembling as Joe, laughing a little breathlessly, balances it on his knees.

Jacob knows it’s coming, knows every moment in his soul, but his heart nearly breaks from joy all the same when Joe takes his large, scuffed and scraped left hand in his smaller ones, pressing a kiss dead center on the back of his hand, then another on his wrist, before pressing a thin, tear-soaked cheek against his skin and breathing Jacob’s favorite Words.

_**“I love you, Jacob.”** _

##############

Jacob Seed is sixteen years old and living in the second Hell of his worthless life.

He’d been so stupid – so _fucking **stupid**_ – when the CPS people had shown up, had had the cops slap cuffs on their bastard of a father, had taken Jacob and Joe and Johnny into a clean building and given them warm food and warm clothes and told them they didn’t have to be scared anymore. He’d been so stupid when the CPS woman with the sticky sweet smile and the bright pink sweater had told them how lucky they were, that there was a family willing to take them all, to keep them together. He’d been so _stupid_ because he had actually _believed_ it, had actually let himself _hope_.

He’d honestly thought things couldn’t be worse than living with their biological parents.

He’d been so stupid.

Jacob’s sprawled out on the ground, half propped against a bale of hay, fighting to breathe and choking on the smell of his own blood, gritting his teeth against each new stab of agony. He tries to ignore it all, to find something else to focus on. He tries to be grateful – somehow – that at least _he’s_ the only one their foster parents beat like this. But even that doesn’t help, because just because they _usually_ stop shy of drawing blood with his little brothers that doesn’t mean they aren’t still _hurting_ them; and right now, feeling weak and pathetic on the floor of this filthy _fucking_ barn, all he can think of is how much he’s failing the only two people who matter.

All he can think of is Joe’s pale face and hollow eyes, staring blankly into the distance as _those people_ slap him and scream at him, take a belt to him over and over and over, call him a freak, a lunatic, swear they’ll throw him into an asylum to rot away like he deserves.

All he can think of is baby Johnny, eyes too wide and cheeks too thin and too, too quiet as _she_ shoves him into a tub of freezing water and screams about how he’s filthy and careless and worthless, as _he_ throws a beer bottle past his ear and calls him a “fucking retard who’s too dumb to speak” and then laughs too loud and so cruel.

It’s not Joe’s fault. Joe’s not damaged or crazy. What person who’s been through what he has _wouldn’t_ retreat from the shithole of a world they live in, wouldn’t look for someone or something more to believe in just to get through the day?

It’s not Johnny’s fault. Johnny’s not stupid or worthless. What child who’s lived his life _wouldn’t_ try and stay as small and quiet as possible, so as to not draw in more attention, more hate, more pain?

It’s _Jacob’s_ fault. _Jacob’s_ the one who’s too stupid, too broken, too pathetic, too _worthless_ to keep his brothers safe. _Jacob’s_ the one who can’t protect and provide, can’t live up to the promises he breathed onto his brothers’ infant bodies. It’s _Jacob’s_ fault that Joe is drifting farther and farther away from the rest of humanity, without the security and stability to keep him moored in reality. It’s _Jacob’s_ fault that Johnny doesn’t feel safe enough to be happy, to be a child, to have spoken a single word – but for the hushed whispers he saves for Joe alone – since he curled up in Joe’s lap and Resolved their bond. It’s all _Jacob’s_ fault, and so he deserves every beating, every pang of hunger, every stab of fatigue and exhaustion that their foster parents can create, and he’ll take on every last pain and injustice the world throws at them if it _kills_ him, just to keep his brothers – his soulmates, his angels, his Joseph and John – as clean and pure and perfect as he can.

Jacob’s lying there in the dirt and hay and blood, trying to breathe, reminding himself that he deserves every moment, and he doesn’t even notices his baby brother’s approach until there’s a tiny, too thin hand on his knee.

He jumps, locks eyes with Johnny, and curses himself again because _damn it_ Johnny shouldn’t have to _see_ things like this. 

He tries to forces his body back under his control, tries to smile and reassure Johnny, tries to get his feet under him and go clean himself up, when Johnny – big, beautiful blue eyes filling with tears and breaking his heart all over again – steps closer and leans over and – feather soft – brushes his lips against the horrible, swelling mess that is his right cheekbone. Then – while Jacob’s still rictus still with shock – Johnny moves and brushes a kiss next to the split in Jacob’s right eyebrow. Then above the place where his nose is broken, and the corner of his busted mouth, the swollen cluster of bruises on his jaw, and finally – just as Jacob feels a wail of… something welling up in his throat – a soft kiss dead center on his forehead.

Jacob’s mind is scrambling, confused and fragile and just barely starting to realize that Johnny is imitating _Joe_ , when his baby brother pulls back and looks him in the eyes, lip quivering helplessly and brow furrowed in agony and concentration as he opens his mouth and…

 _ **“Jacob,”**_ the tiny voice is harsh and raspy from disuse, but deliberate and choked with emotion, full of so much _effort_ to make the _right_ words come out the way Johnny wants them to, _**“I fixed it.”**_ It’s conspicuously _not_ a question, like Johnny’s trying to warp reality through sheer force of will. _**“It’s all better now.”**_

Jacob stares at his baby brother through a veil of tears, reaching up to cup his too thin face as something pure and beautiful and agonizing washes over the Words on his chest – under his left collar bone, over his _heart_. 

For once not caring that he’ll get blood on his little brother – his soulmate, his second chance, his John – he pulls the tiny body into his arms, wrapping himself around Johnny like a suit of armor and rocking him. Through the tears and the pain, through the heartbreak and the strange whisper of redemption, his eyes open of their own accord and sweep over the barn, the dry hay, the solid wooden walls and doors.

He runs his fingers over the promise that curls around the back of Johnny’s neck, and thinks about the matching promise on Joe’s.

Jacob is stupid and broken and pathetic and worthless. But he won’t let that stop him from protecting his brothers.

##############

Jacob Seed is twenty-five years old, and if he’s living in the latest hell of his life at least he’s not alone.

The desert they're currently wasting away in - their latest stop on a series of "incredibly vital" and extremely classified missions - is agonizingly hot, no matter whether they're in shade or not. But at least no one’s shooting at them – for the first time in who the fuck knows – and they haven’t received any orders beyond “stay,” so they’re all sprawled out inside some bombed-out, abandoned building trying to remember what being a normal human feels like.

At the moment they’re playing poker, by the grace of Ngata and her mania for having multiple backups of everything. Nag – who’s from Vegas and, thusly, can never get in on a game with anyone who knows her – is dealer, Malinowski and Grunewald – the stray, ever so slightly unhinged Marines they’d stumbled over a few weeks back and been unable to return to their own kind – had been too wired to join the game and volunteered for first watch, Foster opted out – as always – because he can’t bluff for shit, and MacDougal and Leconte folded almost immediately, which means its Captain Gutierrez, Miller, and Jacob himself playing for the heap of paper scraps that represent everything from candy bars and beers to cigarettes and alibis.

The pot is officially _big_ , Jacob’s sitting pretty with three eights, and he’s pretty damn sure that Miller’s flush just busted and that the Captain’s been bullshitting everyone from the moment the cards were dealt.

He’s just about to toss in a bottle of bourbon he’d won off some moonfaced West Point grad a few months back, when out of nowhere _something_ lances up and through his right forearm, like someone’s come along and ripped out a chunk of shrapnel he didn’t realize was in him. Jacob barks out a curse, cards falling to the makeshift table as he claws at his gear, trying to get to the source of the sensation. Around him the others have jumped to action, the bulk of the group pulling up their guns while Leconte scrambles over to him and starts helping him pull up his sleeve, Grunewald’s voice hissing over the radio as she demands to know what the fuck they're doing down there.

 _“Area’s clear,”_ the sniper sounds tense and more than a little pissed, as usual. _“Nothing but sand and rocks. What are you idiots play at?!”_

“Shit, Ginger,” Leconte finally unearths him, ignoring the tense confusion around them as he starts probing at the inside of Jacob’s forearm, “if you somehow managed to get through this past month only to get yourself bitten by something venomous and die, I’m going to _laugh_ at your cor-” 

The medic trails off abruptly, jaw hanging slack as he stares at some unfamiliar discoloration on Jacob’s skin. Swearing under his breath, the Captain turns to demand answers, only to trail off abruptly himself. Almost as one, the others are starting to stand down, looking at them in confusion. 

Then, peering over Jacob’s shoulder, Foster stutters out, “Wait, is that a…”

“You greedy, cradle-robbing _bastard_!” Miller’s at his shoulder, crowing with delighted laughter and slapping him across the back of the head, even as the Captain snaps back to reality and swears at him to shut the fuck up. “You got us all worked up!”

 _“If_ someone _doesn’t tell me what’s going on down there…”_

“You’re not going to _believe_ this,” Foster’s laughing into the radio as the others start crowding around him, staring at the blurry gray line that's spreading over his skin, “Ginger’s gone and got himself a _third_ soulmate.”

_“Mazel tov, Seed. Now keep it the fuck down.”_

They’re all settling back down, laughing and grinning and shaking their heads at each other, marveling at his unbelievable luck and snickering like little kids over the age difference. Miller, still at his shoulder, ruffles what little hair he has and laughs too loud again. “Shit Jakey, you don’t ever do things by halves, do you? Tell you what,” he claps Jacob on the shoulder, shaking him a little, “next place we get to that's got some kind of bar, I’m buying you a drink to celebrate.” A finger pokes him lightly on the temple, “Maybe by then you’ll have rejoined us mere mortals on planet Earth, huh?” 

Shuttering, Jacob blinks at the shifting lines, then shakily turns to look at Miller.

“Seriously, genius,” Miller huffs a laugh, prodding him again, “ _smile_. This is amazing and you’re the luckiest bastard I know. Ah, of course,” the younger man’s eyes focus on his arm for a moment, brighten, then roll skyward in exaggerated resignation, “they’re going to be feisty too, figures. Some people get all the luck.”

Jacob stares at him for a moment longer, then looks back down at the now fully formed Words on the inside of his right forearm.

They don’t get it. _Can’t_ get it. Can’t possibly understand the new circle of _hell_ he’s fallen into.

He can feel the Words around his left hand and wrist – _**“I love you Jacob.”**_ – and the Words under his left collarbone – _**“Jacob, I fixed it. It’s all better now.”**_ – more intently than he has in years, and they’re _burning_ in his skin, searing reminders of the promises he's already broken to two soulmates and now…

The people around him – his friends, his unit – are happier than they’ve been in _months_ , are smiling and laughing and feeling human again, and all Jacob can think is that somewhere out there is an innocent, newborn baby who’s been cursed to have a broken wreck like _him_ for a soulmate. Somewhere out there is a new soulmate for Jacob to fail and drag down. Somewhere out there is a new promise he’s going to break.

He stares down at the words and tries to will them away, make them fade from his skin, _prays_ for the first time in he doesn’t know how many years that they’ll vanish, that he’ll wake up and this will be just be a bad dream.

But the words just stare up at him, so bright and full of life and unaware of the misery he’ll bring, as they laugh out, _**“But I’m so damn pretty.”**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You know... Jacob was weirdly easy for me to write. … I'm going to go... not think about that for a while._


	3. John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And Johnny makes three. Oh boy._
> 
>  
> 
> _Chapter warnings: Child-abuse, self-harm, oblique reference to attempted suicide, and unhealthy mental states. It's John, y'all._

John Seed is eleven years old, sitting in his Latin class and dutifully ignoring the throbbing in his shoulders and back, when the inside of his right forearm goes blissfully numb for a split-second before erupting back to life with a burst of endorphins.

His lips part minutely, eyes widening and pupils dilating slightly, and a single breath catches in his throat.

Then he blinks once, licks his lips, and turns his attention back to his teacher.

John manages to make it through the rest of his classes without once letting on that anything is out of the ordinary – though the extended length of the accelerated summer courses eats at him like never before – and is perfectly composed when the Duncans’ driver picks him up. He is on his best behavior over dinner, to the misplaced approval of his adoptive parents, who express satisfaction that the previous night’s Corrections served their purpose. He is the model student during his tutoring session, and completes his homework steady and diligently. His manners when he bids the Duncans goodnight are exemplary, and for _once_ his prayers – and this is the first time in years he’s actually bothered with them – are answered as he is sent to bed without further Corrections.

He walks out of their study, walks up the stairs, walks down the hall, walks into his room, and walks into his bathroom, hands shaking violently as he closes and locks the door behind him.

He fumbles with the buttons on his shirt, fighting the urge to rip the damn things off and take whatever punishment comes his way for the carelessness. He pulls it off as quickly as he can, barely feeling the way the rushed action pulls and splits the scabs covering his back and shoulders, and actually lets it fall into a heap on the floor. He squeezes his eyes shut, fights for breath, and then finally – _finally_ – opens his eyes and looks at his arm.

John looks at the ashy gray soulmark on his arm, the Words long since Aligned, and the world around him stops.

In the stillness he can feel his Resolved soulmarks, burning on his skin, more powerfully than he has in years. He can feel _**“We love you, John, we love you so, so much"**_ twining around his left hand and wrist. He can feel _**“We’ll keep you safe, we’ll always be with you”**_ nestled across the back of his neck. And now…

Slowly, carefully, he traces his fingers over the gray Words that run along his arm – over the veins and amongst the scars – in a frantic scrawl.

Then, slowly, his lips lilt up and up and up into a smile, and his nails curl down and down and down into his flesh.

John Seed is eleven years old, standing in his bathroom surrounded by laughter and tears, blood streaming around the Words that scream up at him, _**“Yes! Yes! Fucking yes, alright?! Yes! Yes.”**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Things that have **really** surprised me while writing this: chapter 1 - Joseph has the least horrible chapter; chapter 2 - Jacob has the longest chapter of the Seed brothers; and chapter 3 - John's chapter is really, really short and concise. I do not know what John suddenly decided to be concise, y'all, I really don't. But... oi, writing this kind... hurt a little._
> 
>  
> 
> _Next time we wrap things up with the Deputy, who will... kind of make up for the shortness of this chapter. And then some._
> 
>  
> 
>   _I'm going to go pet my dogs now. Bye._


	4. Robin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Welp, here it is: the wild FemDep in her native habitat - an AO3 fanfic._
> 
> _Chapter Warnings: Adult-type language, underaged drinking, off-screen attempted sexual assault, vague self-harm/reckless behavior, and a non-generic Deputy._

Robin Baird is born with three soulmarks, one under her left collarbone – _“over the heart”_ – one across the back of her neck – _“to guard”_ – and one around her left hand and wrist – _“to guide”_. 

Being born with three soulmates is something rare, something special, and something that most assuredly does not happen in a place like Baker’s Ford, Montana. Her parents – both soulmarked to people they’ll probably never meet and too pointedly vocal about how happy they are together – do everything short of renting the front page of the local paper in celebration. Pawpaw – her mother’s father – jokes about the difficulties of having to dispose of _three_ bodies if things go wrong, laughs off the wails that a sheriff shouldn’t joke about things like that, and nearly gets thrown out of the hospital for passing out cigars to anyone within reach. Bubbe – Pawpaw’s soulmate and wife of twenty-one years – stares quietly at baby Robin for a long time, then finally sets about praying three times as hard for her only grandchild.

Robin is, of course, entirely unaware of all of this because she is a newborn infant and probably wouldn’t _care_ even if she could comprehend it.

That initial disinterest in her soulmarks doesn’t stop them from being one of the most important parts of her formative years. From that first day it’s something her parents talk about – speculating about who her soulmates will be and how they’ll meet and what her Words will say (and she never says, but growing up Robin almost wonders if it’s her three soulmarks that keep her parents together when they obviously can’t stand each other, even more than fear of social shaming and spite at their absentee soulmates). It’s something that family friends and acquaintances gush over – little Robin Red Bird with her three soulmates, blessed and beloved and probably meant for something special. It’s something that influences every last interaction she has – any time someone new so much as _breathes_ in her direction it seems like her parents are going to break their necks looking to see if one of her marks has Resolved.

For her own part, Robin is significantly less impressed than everyone else. 

It’s not that she dislikes the idea of soulmates in general, or the fact that she has three all her own, it’s just that… well, it’s just that she’s more of a “wary old soul” (as Pawpaw puts it) about things than most people are. And it’s not like she doesn’t know that the reality of being soulmarked is usually in a different county from the fantasy of it – her parents are proof enough of that – and she can’t help but think that three soulmarks might just be three times the chance for things to be less than fantastical. 

Heck, everyone acts like being out of the ordinary – having so many soulmates out there – somehow guarantees that things will be better than amazing, when every out-of-the-ordinary-soulmarked person Robin knows disproves that something fierce. Like Jeanie Caruthers, who was so proud when her soulmark started Aligning a full year before anyone else’s, only to burst into humiliated tears when the words _**“Do you want fries with that?”**_ showed up along her shin in the middle of the playground. Or Trevor Rydel, the only other person in the county with more than one soulmate, whose soulmarks are both nothing but long strings of “extremely-grown-up-words” that have condemned him to a life of long-sleeves and pants and embarrassment. 

So unlike her parents and her classmates and pretty much everyone else except Pawpaw and Bubbe (bless his “cynical old-man mind” and her “cautious optimism” for telling her she isn’t crazy), Robin doesn’t take it for granted that her soulmarks will turn out to be nothing but sunshine and rainbows.

Even still, she can’t help but get excited as her sixth birthday approaches, when the lines of blurry gray start to move, to twist and spread and sharpen. She tries to keep her head on straight, but no matter how hard she tries her mind keeps wandering, wondering about what the words will be. Because… yeah, they _could_ be something embarrassing or stupid or whatever… but they could also be really, really cool. They could be something fun, like “live long and prosper,” or nice, like “wow, how did you survive that, those fires looked really crazy,” or awesome, like “quick, take my spare rocket launcher, they’re sending in the ninjas and laser tigers!” Or, you know, whatever.

So she waits, and watches, and tries to be cautiously optimistic as she approaches the big six.

Then she gets the chicken pox from Megan Tucker a couple days before her birthday – which just _figures_ – and suddenly everyone’s too busy worrying about the epidemic of annoying childhood illness that sweeps through the school to pay much attention to the shifting lines on Robin’s wrist and neck and chest.

It’s not until eight days after her birthday that she wakes up feeling _human_ again. Slowly, still feeling bone-weary, she gets out of bed, shrugs on her robe, and drags herself down the stairs and into the kitchen, grabbing a bowl and filling it with cereal as she listens to her mom singing in the laundry room.

She’s mechanically funneling dry cereal into her mouth when Mama sweeps into the room, takes one look at her, and drops the hamper of clean laundry to the floor with a shrieked “Robin Clancy!”

She jumps, a panicked and conditioned “I didn’t do it!” bursting from her lips the second her middle name is verbalized. It's only moments later, when her mother is rushing over to her with a smile splitting her face, that she realizes she isn’t in trouble and starts being confused.

Then Mama catches up her left hand and she realizes the spiral of fuzzy gray has stopped moving and is looking distinctly word-like, and suddenly things start making sense.

“Oh baby,” Mama’s practically beside herself, shaking with joy and looking like her face is going to split in two, “you should have come and told me as soon as you woke up!” There must be some confusion or something on Robin’s face, because Mama laughs, bright and gleeful, and taps her playfully on the nose. “Smile, you silly goose! This is going to be one of the best days of your life!” Her eyes crinkle up at the corners, the way they do when she’s _actually_ happy, and Robin can feel the excitement start to take hold of her as well. “Oh, my little girl,” Mama coos, “you’re finally going to find out the first words your soul-”

Robin blinks, excitement stilling as her mother’s voice cuts off abruptly, eyes fixed on the Words around her left hand and wrist, expression twisted with confusion and… and something else. “Mama?”

Her mother’s eyes fly up to her face, wide and full of that same mix of confusion and… and whatever it is. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again, and suddenly Dad walks into the kitchen. “Well hey sweetheart, you finally feeling better -” And then his words trail off too, and she can feel him behind her, staring at the back of her neck. When he speaks again his voice is low and rough with the same something – it’s not _fear_ , it can’t be, that doesn’t make _sense_ – in Mama’s expression, a whole world of emotion packed into _“Abigail…”_

Robin starts to twist towards him, feeling confused and _scared_ and wanting to know what’s going on, but her mother’s still got her hand so when she goes too far and gets jerked to a stop her robe slips a little, falling down her left shoulder, and her pajama shirt shifts exposing her tank top some, and suddenly Mama makes a _sound_ , low and sharp and horrible and kind of like an animal that’s just been kicked, and Robin _freezes_.

For a minute nobody moves. Nobody speaks. Nobody even breaths loudly.

Then, with a weird, jittery sounding laugh, Mama starts to button the cuff of her left sleeve.

Robin looks back to her, and Mama’s smiling again but… but it’s not… it’s not _real_ , not a _nice_ smile. It’s something frozen and forced and doesn’t do anything to disguise the _something_ overflowing in her eyes as Mama finishes with the cuff, then reaches over to slowly, deliberately button up Robin’s pajama shirt, all the way to the neck – which Mama knows she _hates_ – before pulling her robe back onto her shoulders and belting it just shy of too tight.

“You know what?” Mama’s voice is funny, breathless, full of the same fake cheer that’s twisting her mouth into an un-smile, and she’s standing up jerkily. “How about I make pancakes, hmm?”

Robin doesn’t respond, and neither does Dad, but Mama doesn’t seem to realize, already sweeping through the kitchen, all jittery like some kind of puppet or something. Robin doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything but stare blankly at her mother, but something finally seems to click in her father and he speaks again, louder and strangled this time, “ _Abigail_.”

Mama doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t really seem to be paying attention to anything, and that’s probably why when his hand closes on her arm she shrieks, jumps, and drops the large glass mixing bowl to the ground where it shatters against the linoleum. 

Robin watches, wide eyed, as Mama barks another fake laugh, falls to her knees, and tries to gather up the shards of glass, only to _scream_ , _“Fuck!”_ – high and strangled and horrible, like some wild animal when a trap closes around its leg – when a shard splits her hand open and spills blood over the mess.

Dad shouts her name again, and Mama rears back at him, snarling like a feral dog, face twisting and contorting into a flurry of different emotions before falling into pure, agonized despair.

“I…” There’s tears in Mama’s eyes as she pulls away, looking everywhere but at Robin. “I need to…” And with another low animal sound, Mama runs out of the kitchen.

There’s another moment of stillness. Then, shakily, Dad turns to Robin, a tight, painful looking smile on his face. “Sweetheart, why don’t…” he breathes sharply, smile twitching, “why don’t you go watch TV while I clean up in here. Alright?”

Robin stares at him for a moment. Then, slowly, she slips off her chair and out of the kitchen. 

She pads through the house, passing the living room entirely, and ducks into the guest bathroom, where she locks the door with trembling hands. The house is deathly quiet as she works at the buttons on her left cuff, never used and so stiff and unwilling to budge. When she finally tugs them free she pushes up the sleeve, takes a deep breath, and reads the gray Words that wrap around her hand and wrist. When she reaches the end of them she stops, figures that in all the excitement she read them wrong, and reads them again. Then she reads them a third time, sounding out each letter like she used to when she was just learning how to read.

The words don’t change, and the meaning doesn’t make her feel any less confused or anxious than it did the first time.

Breathing steadily through her nose, she opens one of the cabinet doors, pulling out a hand mirror that Mama keeps for Company. Then, with stiff, clumsy fingers, she unties her robe and hangs it up on a peg, and then begins the painfully slow task of unbuttoning her pajama shirt. Eventually she just stops halfway, shrugs her arms out of the sleeves, and lets the shirt fall down around her waist. Then she picks up the hand mirror. Then she stops. 

After a few moments, still breathing through her nose, she swallows hard, turns around and angles the hand mirror to re-reflect the words on the back of her neck. 

She reads those words three times too.

Finally she turns again, faces the mirror, and uses the hand mirror again to read the words under her collarbone, three times.

She puts the hand mirror down on the counter and stares at her reflection, all small and wide eyed and bone white.

The Words whisper at her, burning on her skin.

_**“God will not let you take me”**_ wraps around her left hand and wrist like a shackle. _**“You know, if it were up to me, you would have been dead a long time ago”**_ curves across the back of her neck like a noose. _**“You will confess. Every sin you’ve ever committed. No matter how petty, no matter how small… I will pull from you. Then we’ll see if you’re worthy of Atonement”**_ cuts over her heart like a brand.

She stares at herself for a long time.

Then, feeling small and confused and _scared_ , she sits down against the wall, tucks her knees up under her chin, wraps her arms around her legs, buries her head and starts to cry.

Robin Baird is six years old and her soulmates break her heart for the first time.

##############

Things are different after that.

The first change is that her parents just… stop talking about soulmates. Any soulmates in general, and Robin’s in particular. After six years of it being their favorite subject, the sudden absence is disorienting.

The second change is in her wardrobe. Within a few days of… _it_ happening, Robin’s closet starts to fill up with long sleeves, and high necklines and collars. Dresses stop appearing so much, and the ones that do are old fashioned affairs that cover up most of her body, and even they are only insisted on for church and other special events. Gloves become a daily thing.

She doesn’t really notice the third change for a couple weeks, when everyone’s finally gotten over the chickenpox and a bunch of kids are out playing. Robin’s ducked down, tying one of her shoes, when she overhears Kitty Turpin bawling her brother Lyle out about how no one’s “supposed to talk about it, Mama said” and “how would _you_ feel if _your_ marks started fading and people kept askin’ to see?” It takes her a second to process what she heard, then suddenly she realizes that no one’s brought up her marks _once_ since _it_ happened. That’s when she realizes that her parents have told everyone, or at least implied, that one or more of her soulmates has _died_. She doesn’t know why, exactly, but somehow that hurts more than the Words themselves.

Robin’s always gotten on well with all the kids her age, but her _best_ friend is Matt Warren, who she calls “Big” while he calls her “Blaze” and who she’s known since diapers. Big is the only person she tells a part of the truth to, that it’s not that her soulmates are dead it’s just that her marks are kind of really bad, and he nods in sympathy, gives her one of his cookies, and doesn’t ask for anything more than she wants to give. She tries really, really hard to not get upset all over again that it’s not _him_ that’s her soulmate. She doesn’t say a word about it to anyone else.

Life goes on. Her parents don’t talk about it, start acting like none of it ever happened and that everything’s ok. Pawpaw and Bubbe very obviously have no idea what to say, but they’re there for her anyway. Big is like a rock under her feet and at her back, keeping her steady and holding her up, telling her it’s going to be fine without ever saying a word. No one else has a clue or says a thing to her. It’s all weird and confusing and hurts, but Robin squares her shoulders, checks that her clothes are covering her just right, and keeps going.

Eventually, she starts making a new kind of normal.

Robin turns seven and comes to the conclusion that year round long sleeves and buttoned cuffs and gloves for the rest of her life aren’t going to work – she’s not Trevor Rydel, she can’t _deal_ with that kind of thing. So, one day, she grabs a roll of bandage tape out from Pawpaw’s medicine cabinet and wraps it around her left hand and wrist to cover up the Words. That looks kind of weird, so she wraps the other hand and wrist too, which still looks kind of weird but at least it looks intentional, rather than like she’s trying to hide something. It still gets some weird looks at first. Then, towards the end of that June, Tommy Wolcott talks her into walking the perimeter of the MacTavish’s barn roof as a form of immersion therapy for her fear of heights while Carlos Flynn films it, and halfway to the end of it a goose flies up out of nowhere, knocks her off, and she ends up in the hospital with a broken arm, bruised everything, three missing teeth, and a new thirst for the blissful numbness that danger and adrenaline give her. After that people get really used to seeing her bruised and scraped within an inch of her life so, when the bandage tape gets exchanged for a sizeable collection of cloth wraps – the kind that boxers use! – people stop looking weird at her wrapped up hands and wrists. That little freedom, such that it is, helps her negotiate some in regards to her wardrobe, and crew neck t-shirts and lightweight, collared jackets become her lifelong uniform.

Robin turns eight and – after a particularly bad scare – starts training herself to never be the first person to speak in a conversation, at least when there’s new people potentially around. It makes her reputation a little weirder; the girl who’ll ride her bike down a nearly sheer slope and try to ramp off into a lake while laughing like a crazy person, but turns shy as a baby deer the second she’s around people she doesn’t know. It also gets her teased a lot, but so long as it works Robin couldn’t care less about that.

The autumn Robin turns nine Bubbe - only forty-one years old - has a stroke and doesn’t make it to the hospital. Four days later Pawpaw - forty-six - is gone too. Everyone says that he passed away in his sleep and call it a mercy. At their funeral Robin sits in church in a long sleeved, high necked dress, gloves, and an aching empty hole in her heart, clutching Big’s hand like she’s going to break it. She listens to people talk about how much Bubbe and Pawpaw loved each other, how beautiful their relationship was, how rich their life together was, how she pulled him up out of hell and he gave her the world in return, and the only thing as bad as the fact that her grandparents are _gone_ is the knowledge that _that’s_ what soulmates are supposed to be for you.

Robin turns ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen and settles into herself. She’s got Big and Tommy Wolcott and Carlos Flynn, and she gets Ramona Hartley. She reaches a point where she can think about her grandparents with more happiness than sadness, and she tells herself that she doesn’t mind the realization that her parents are going to get divorced the second she leaves for college. Her personal uniform feels perfectly natural on her, she’s never once the first person to speak, and she finally stops twitching whenever people talk about soulmates and soulmarks.

Robin turns fourteen and puberty hits like a bitch. She shoots up like a weed – which is great – and develops a collection of curves the older women of Baker’s Ford call ample – which is _not_. She learns to love compression sports bras, gets _really_ good at punching people, and tries not to get really jealous when all puberty does to Big is make his nickname un-ironic.

Robin turns fifteen and gets _better_ at punching people.

Then, in October, Big meets his soulmate at a football game a few towns over. The guy’s name is Simon, he’s a biology nerd with glasses and big brown eyes, and it’s obvious within seconds of their bond Resolving that the two of them are going to be disgustingly in love. Robin’s heart nearly explodes she’s so happy for her best friend, and she laughs and smiles and hugs them both, and when Big drags her aside looking like he’s going to be sick she tells him how happy she is. Then, hours later when they’re back in Baker’s Ford, Robin sneaks out her window, runs like a madwoman through the forests and up Kershaw Peak, and just _screams_ until her throat is raw and there’s tears streaming down her face as she collapses on the ground, her soulmarks burning like fire in her skin.

It gets harder and harder to ignore her soulmarks after that, the reminder that soulmates are supposed to be a good thing acting like a knife that someone’s drug along each letter, splitting the skin and making the Words raw and open. She starts closing in on herself again, slowly, getting quieter and twitchier until one day in May when things finally come to a head. School’s let out, finals finished and their Sophomore year shoved behind them with extreme prejudice, and pretty much the entire school’s congregated in one of the less popular camping areas of Kershaw Peak in scattered clusters of exhausted, exuberant celebrants. There’s music playing from a fairly decent set up in the back of somebody’s truck, campfires are going everywhere, and there’s a steady supply of cheap beer and “illicit cigarettes” from Sam Foley’s cousin Ted – a college dropout who works at a local convenience store, and who believes that age is “a social construct made to suppress individual expression and free will” but is totally on board with money – so it’s not long before the whole area is abuzz with the sounds low-key youthful revelry. Robin and her group – Big, Tommy Wolcott, Ramona Hartley, and Carlos Flynn – settle themselves a little away from everyone else, on the outskirts of the celebration. They collect their share of the beer – past caring that it’s lukewarm – and pass on the joints – haha, puns – and set about with decompressing.

Then at some point during the night Ramona asks Big about Simon, and suddenly they’re talking about soulmates and soulmarks.

Ramona and Carlos are both blissfully unmarked, and regard the whole thing with a sort of bemused wonder, genuinely curious if it really lives up to the hype. Big is still riding high off of meeting his soulmate, and is unusually vocal about how “ _yeah,_ it really does.” Tommy says that it’s great, but definitely not as fairy tale perfect as people make it out to be, and that he’s proof because he’s actually got Jeanie Caruthers and Trevor Rydel beat for worst soulmark in the county. And Robin…

She knows _better_ than to say anything but it’s been a long day and a longer week and her head’s too fuzzy from too many beers so she jumps in with, “Mine’re the worst.”

Everyone jumps a little – which, fair enough, Robin hasn’t said a word about her soulmarks in nearly ten years, and a lot of people still kind of think her soulmates are long dead – and Big’s happiness evaporates as the guilt sets in, but Tommy derails anyone else by raising one eyebrow at her and scoffing, “Yeah, sure Rob.”

“Um, _yeah_.” She gives a too deep nod, laughing a little hysterically under her breath. “Definitely the worst.”

Carlos and Ramona murmur their semi-confused condolences and Big tries to change the subject like the good friend that he is, but Tommy’s always been kind of a competitive asshole so he raises his other eyebrow at her in a challenge. “Seriously? You’ve got a soulmark worse than,” he gestures vaguely towards his ribcage, “ _ **Back off motherfucker, I’ve got mace**_?”

She knows better than to say anything, she really does, but Robin’s always been kind of a competitive asshole too, and anyways she’s so damned _sick_ of hiding away the marks that crawl and burn sickly and secretly in her skin.

So, eyes locked with Tommy’s, she lunges forward and pulls away the jumble of wraps around her left wrist, thrusting it out for the group to inspect. Then, as she watches them squint and frown as they try and comprehend what they’re seeing, she shrugs off her jacket and yanks off her shirt in two fluid movements, and then just sort of… stands there, in nothing but her jeans and boots and sports-bra, while her confused and slightly uncomfortable friends take in her soulmarks for the first time.

Things are really quiet for a minute, in the way that only a group of mostly drunk teenagers can be when the mood suddenly veers from some place fun into some place strange. Then Carlos – who showed up late and has, as a result, drunk less than anybody else – gets to the end of the soulmark under her left collarbone and breaths out a horrified, “the fuck?!” and like that’s some kind signal suddenly they’re all talking at her.

“Maybe they’re… into theater?” Ramona stutters before wincing, because, _yeah_ , people who’ve ever met Robin _immediately_ connect her to the stage and/or screen. “They could be lines from… from a play or something…”

“Song lyrics.” Big jumps in definitively, because there are _reasons_ he’s her best friend, and knowing her well enough to actually come up with semi-plausible ideas is one of them. “Weird religious themes and survival of the fittest shit, that’s totally the lyrics to some weird bluegrass band you’d go to see.”

“Holy shit Rob.” Tommy gasps, because he’s an asshole who’s too damn good at seeing through all the bullshit and doesn’t have a diplomatic bone in his body. “Rob… Robby, I think your soulmates might be serial-killers.”

She actually double-takes at Tommy, and a startled laugh breaks out from behind her lips. Then, almost in the same moment, Big leans over and decks Tommy in the face which – since its Big and since Big’s drunk – knocks Tommy ass over elbows and send him sprawling to the ground, which immediately turns the startled laugh into an outright fit of hysterical laughter. 

Some indiscriminate amount of time later she’s starting to pull the laughter under control and is trying to choke back the sobs, and Ramona presses another beer into her hand while Big does the same for Tommy – who’s finally got his nose to stop bleeding – and they all seem to come to the conclusion that there is no good reason whatsoever to be even a little sober anymore and then they’re all downing warm beers and passing out under the stars.

The next morning Robin wakes up, regrets everything that’s ever happened in her life, and staggers over to puke into the bushes. A few heaves in someone staggers next to her and pulls her hair back, a little too late but appreciated none the less.

Eventually, when her stomach realizes there’s no more point to anything, Robin stumbles away from the vomit-soaked bushes and collapses to the ground against Tommy Wolcott’s shoulder. They just sit there for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder, not saying anything. Then, because he’s a total asshole but is still her oldest and best friend not named Big, Tommy’s puts one arm around her shoulder and mutters “To hell with those bastards, Robby, you’re amazing.”

And she’s not entirely sure whether she should laugh at that or burst into tears, so she settles for hugging the dumbass.

Robin Baird is almost sixteen years old and has the worst soulmarks of anyone she knows, but at least she’s got some awesome friends.

##############

They don’t really talk about it at first, which is frankly kind of nice because Robin’s still feeling pretty damn raw and is allergic to crying in front of people. Then, slowly, bit by bit, it starts slipping into conversations when it’s just them – a vague reference here, a subtle acknowledgement there. Finally, one evening over fishing poles and beers, her friends decide to just rip off the Band-Aid and come up with a solution for her “soulmate problem.”

It is exactly as awkward and ridiculous as anything could be, and just about as productive as trying to ice skate while on fire and covered with bees that are also on fire.

Hell, the best solution anyone can come up with is to take a vow of silence and become a hermit or cloistered nun or something, which, ok, would probably work, but would also probably drive her so completely insane that her serial-killer soulmates would look normal in comparison.

So, in the end, the others admit that her established plan is probably the most feasible – make sure she is never the first one to speak when meeting someone new, and go through life hoping she just never runs into any of her soulmates.

As plans go it really sucks, and they’re all kind of annoyed that they can’t think of any real alternatives.

Still… them knowing, Robin finally not being alone with herself and her soulmarks and her parent’s oppressive silence… it helps. More than she’d ever imagined it could’ve. Somewhere around her seventeenth birthday she ever reaches the point where she can kind of joke about it, and if nothing else she’s able to laugh at the expressions on her friends’ faces when she does.

So they go about their lives, and day by day her soulmarks burn a little less, and finally her eighteenth birthday is coming up and they’ve graduated high school and are laughing themselves sick when someone calls them “adults” for the first time. And then they stop laughing, because suddenly it's time for them all to leave.

Big is already being courted by half-a-dozen professional football teams, but ultimately settles on Penn State because that’s where Simon’s going and because he’s a practical dork who plans for the long term. Before they leave they hold a commitment ceremony, at which Robin is his bestwoman and during which she most certainly does not cry even a little, no matter what anyone says or produces video evidence of. A few weeks later they send everyone a picture of them on the steps of some Pennsylvania courthouse, beaming uncontrollably and showing off their rings, and Robin definitely does not cry again.

Tommy gets scouted by the University of Wisconsin, meets Paris Whitmire in his second semester, and does indeed get his face maced. When they get married four months later Robin is one of his groomspersons, wears a ridiculously pretty dress – picked out by Ramona – just to screw with his mind, and leads the entire wedding party in spraying him with silly-string for the exact same reason.

Ramona and Carlos both make their way to California, where Carlos starts going to film school and Ramona gets signed by some record label. They’re both happy and usually single and won’t stop pestering her to move out there to and sign on with Ramona’s agent or something.

Robin gets into Montana State, is not in the least surprised when her parents get divorced and her mother takes the first bus out of Baker’s Ford during her first semester, knocks out her associates degree in a year, then gets a bachelor in Criminal Justice, and almost immediately gets hired on as a deputy in a town called Cedar Peaks. She lasts nearly four months there before she breaks the face of a senior deputy who tries to corner her in the showers. After the blood gets cleaned up and the dust starts to settle, the sheriff takes her aside and explains that while, _yes_ , the sonovabitch had it coming, and yes he is getting _fired_ … its probably best that she not stay on at Cedar Peaks.

Then he tells her that an old friend has an opening for a new deputy in a place called Hope County.

She meets Sheriff Whitehorse that weekend, in a crappy little diner on the outskirts of her potential new precinct, and is pretty sure he’s already made up his mind to hire her before she even arrives. About five minutes in, Whitehorse glances at her over the top of his coffee cup and asks, “You smart enough to bring your things with you?”

She was – easy enough when you don’t have a crap-ton of crap – and so, once they finish their terrible coffee and worse specials, Whitehorse gives her directions to a little cabin that’s set aside by the county for public servants to lease, and tells her to show up bright and early for work on Monday.

She settles in pretty quickly, meets fellow deputies Pratt – who’s the Staci to her Robin by the end of the first day – and Hudson – who becomes Joey the next week when they break up a bar-brawl together – as well as their “office staff” – a dispatcher/receptionist named Nancy, who probably has some kind of little-olde-grandma-checklist that she adheres to religiously hidden somewhere. She starts learning the lay of the land, familiarizes herself with some of the more colorful locals, and grows increasingly concerned about the elephant in the county that no one in her department seems to want to talk about or let her near.

Robin’s not entirely certain _how_ the Project at Eden’s Gate – and _wow_ , could they have picked a more ominous name for their cult? – got so big, so entrenched, and so damned _powerful_ without anyone doing anything about it, or without anyone _outside_ Hope County even hearing more than whispers about it.

She’s also really, really pissed about it. Not just because Whitehorse was apparently ok with hiring a new deputy into this powder keg but _isn’t_ ok with _talking_ about it or helping her prepare in any way for the increasingly probably firestorm it’s going to cause – although that _is_ really annoying. Not just because Staci and Joey have apparently decided that she’s some precious flower that needs to be sheltered from anything and everything to do with the cult – although that is _particularly_ annoying and more than a little insulting. And not just because she’s your run-of-the-mill baseline decent human being who’s opposed to cults and cult-like things as a matter of basic principal. No, first and foremost it’s because there are people – good, decent, hardworking people and bad, scum-sucking, utter jackasses and everything in between – being _hurt_ and being _scared_ and no one is _doing anything_ about it.

And so when the dam finally breaks, when Mr. Big City Marshal Burke – with his head fused to his own rectum and headlines dancing visibly in his eyes – shows up to storm Eden’s Gate and take “Father” Joseph Seed – and, ok, _seriously_ , how many warning signs do people need that there’s going to be enforced polygamy and Kool-Aid or whatever in their future if they don’t run away screaming? – into custody… well, its weirdly easy to ignore the perfectly reasonable voice in her head screaming “what’s wrong with you, _no_!” at her and sign herself on for the arrest.

_Granted_ , she – like everyone else in her precinct – had naturally _assumed_ Burke would be bringing more than just them and his own ego for backup, because she is borderline competent and not actually suicidal. 

The whole flight out feels like a bad dream, one that Robin keeps expecting to wake up from. But she doesn’t, and Staci lands the helicopter, and they’re walking through the middle of cult city, past an army of terrifying violent cultists, and suddenly she walking through the doors of the horrifyingly quaint church with Sheriff Whitehorse and Burke. And then…

Hearing Joseph Seed’s voice on that video clip was weird. Surreal. Left something running up and down her spine and under her skin for hours. Hearing it in person, just at the other end of the “church” just makes things worse, and Robin feels wired and terrified and on edge in a way that has nothing to do with the obvious danger of the situation, in a way she can’t explain. And she knows that’s part and parcel with being a cult leader, has heard first and secondhand accounts of how unnaturally charismatic “The Father” is, but still there’s something profoundly _wrong_ in the way her mind keeps trying to tune into him and _only_ him, pushing everything else into the background.

She grits her teeth, squares her shoulders, and falls into step with Whitehorse and the marshal, keeps her eyes alert and breathing steady and hand near – but not _on_ , no ma’am, do not provoke the crazy cult people – her gun. Doesn’t twitch when the cultists turn and spit and glare at them, doesn’t flinch when “The Father’s” little “Heralds” stalk around the back of the building like a hungry wolf pack, doesn’t give in to the increasingly loud voice in her head that’s screaming for her to _run_ as they approach the man himself.

Joseph Seed stands in front of his congregation, lit from behind and looking like the world’s most psychotic fallen angel. There’s a tension in the air, the ever clichéd calm before the storm that gets ripped apart when Burke brings out the arrest warrant. For a second it looks like hell's going to break loose then and there, only for Joseph to stop it, send his people out of the church, leave it just them and him and his heralds and then –

“God will not let them take me.”

The world stops for a second, Joseph’s words – too familiar, too _close_ – hanging in the air around her like razor wire.

Through a haze she can see people walking past her, hear Burke barking something, hear Joseph Seed’s crazed ranting, and Robin knows she needs to be paying attention to what’s going on except…

Except… except suddenly Joseph’s turned towards her, lifted his hands to her, and suddenly she can see two little words – a _soulmark_ – on Joseph Seed, nestled incongruously amongst the tattoos and scars. Except she _knows_ the shape of those Words. Except the handwriting on those two simple, sweet, liquid black words nestled under Joseph Seed’s left collarbone – _just over the heart_ – is exactly the same as the handwriting of the _fucking_ ash-gray serial-killer’s soliloquy that she’s spent nearly twenty years covering up and fearing and trying not to look at in her own _fucking_ mirror every _fucking_ day.

Robin can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t move. Can’t do anything but slowly – painfully – drag her gaze up from the dark mirror soulmark on Joseph Seed’s chest to stare into his eyes.

Joseph meets her gaze calmly, indulgently, and he’s smiling at her – all self-righteousness and condescension, like she’s a worm crawling through shit at the feet of the god he thinks he is – and her heart is pounding like it’s going to rip out of her chest, and every fiber of her being is screaming to get _out_ of there already, and then Joseph Seed’s hellfire eyes are burning into hers and his mouth opens and “ _ **God will not let you take me**_ ” falls from his lips.

The world around her stops as his Words _burn_ into her skin, like someone’s just plunged her hand and wrist into molten iron or liquid nitrogen or something, the agony lancing down into her bones and rushing through her and all she wants to do is pull her gun and blow that ugly, smug smile off his face, or better yet put her gun to her own head and blow her brains out all over his twisted mockery of a church.

She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but feel that cold burn in her skin and see his eyes and smile cutting her to pieces, measuring her up and discarding her out of hand. And even as she can’t look away from Joseph Seed she can _feel_ his brothers standing behind him, confident and self-righteous and cruel, and they haven’t even opened their mouths _once_ but she can feel the Words behind them, lurking and waiting and ready to tear free and rip her open all over again until there’s nothing left. She wants to _scream_ and _cry_ and burn the world down around her, but all she can do is stand there, staring into the cold, cruel eyes of her soulmate.

Deputy Robin Baird is twenty-two years old, and she’s not sure how many more times her heart can break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Everybody, say hello to my debatably stable adrenaline-junkie/sarcastic wild-child - Deputy Robin Baird. I am going to put this poor woman through hell that she absolutely does not deserve, and I am going to feel much less bad about it than I should._  
> 
> _(Also, and idk if anyone cares, but her name is 100% a pun, in and out of universe. The thought process behind it (on my end, at least) is as follows: Huh, that's cute, the Deputy's the rookie on the team so her team calls her "Rook." A rook is also a crow. A crow is a bird. Baird is a surname that sounds like bird. A robin is also a bird. Robin is also a name that can be given to a boy or girl. The Deputy can be a boy or girl. … … … **Deputy Robin Baird! Done.** \- aaaaand that's how my mind works at one AM on my day off when I've finally gotten to start up the game I've been anticipating like crazy)._
> 
> _So, inane rambling aside. I was initially planning to take a break from Far Cry 5 for a little bit, to work on some of the other stuff that I... really, really, **really** need to update (seriously, there's fics that have gone without an update for so long its legitimately **disgusting** )... however. *sigh* What can I say, I've always been someone who writes as the muse strikes, and right now my muse is wearing a Testy Festy shirt and beating me about the head and face with a bowling ball. Which is very uncomfortable, but is also productive for writing Far Cry. Which is to say I am currently working on a sequel. Now normally, I am the sort of writer who finishes a chapter, edits it about a half-dozen times, then immediately uploads it, promises to update soon, and then proceeds to do precisely the opposite because the sort of writer I am is widely known as the "horrible garbage person." So I'm trying this new thing where I try to get all/most of the fic written before I start posting. Which is to say, **tl:dr** , I can't promise that the sequel will be **published** soon, but once it is it should be **updated** quickly and regularly. Also, did you notice that I said "inane rambling aside" and then proceeded to ramble inanely? No real follow up to that rhetorical question, I just like to be self-aware about my insanity._
> 
> _Real talk though? Thank you all so much for reading this! You're all awesome and I really hope you enjoyed it! See y'all next time! \^x^/_

**Author's Note:**

> _Somehow, and I really truly don't know **how** , Joseph's part of this kind of ended up being the least horrible. I am as surprised as anyone by this._


End file.
